Q: Many intelligent and talented women stay with men who abuse them. They are ashamed, afraid and yes, in love.
I don’t want my family to know what my marriage is really like, so I don’t tell them that he hits me. My father would end up in jail for what he would do if he knew what my husband did to me. My family shouldn’t know what I am going through. I made my bed and now I will sleep in it.
What would the people at church think of me if they knew that I caused my husband to yell at me, hit me, cheat on me? My neighbours would laugh at me if they knew I was stupid enough to marry a man like that. My friends would be disappointed in me.
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I am too stupid, too ugly, too old, too fat, to make it on my own. You know how the same stores continue to get robbed and the same churches seem to be vandalized. It’s the same with women. We seem to continue to attract men that abuse us.
A: Whoa. Go back and re-read what you wrote.
You are being abused, but you don’t want to let anyone know about it because of what … shame? Who is being abusive, you or your husband?
Does shame need to keep you in an abusive, and perhaps dangerous relationship, because you got conned by someone who turned out completely different?
Just because you make a mistake when driving a car and slip into a muddy ditch, that doesn’t mean you have to stay with that car forever. What you think of yourself is more critical to your well-being than what people at work or at church may think about you. Thinking you are locked for life into an unhealthy situation just because you are married is archaic and cruel.
Sometimes, to see your situation objectively, you have to distance yourself physically for a period of time. I call this a time-out separation, where people separate to explore the possibilities of their marriage.
The second step of a separation is to stay apart long enough for it to be effective, often several months, and start seeing each other slowly, as dates, rather than moving right back into either intimacy or living together.
Therapeutic separations often need a third party, such as a counsellor or mediator, who can help you learn how to change your behaviour.
Until you have worked on yourself and learned new ways of reacting to yourself and others, you are not ready to look at the other person and objectively see what changes he may have made. If a relationship is to improve, both partners must make changes.
Promises don’t count in this process. Promises are often manipulative tactics.
Once you come back, the partner may not follow through with the promises.
What is the result? You are in a more vulnerable situation.
Peter Griffiths is a mental health counsellor based in Prince Albert, Sask. His columns are intended as general advice only. His website is www3.sk.sympatico.ca/petecope.
